Happy Friendship Day !!!

It was a boring afternoon on a gloomy rainy day in Mumbai. A little boy walked up by the sidewalk all alone and looked way too grumpy for his age. It so happened that his father had been transferred from a sleepy town in Kerala to the looming by-lanes & towering skyline of Mumbai. It was a new setting , not quite idyllic though, move over the kayaks & lagoons of Kerala :with new faces & new things to do. As he looked up at every skyscraper all he wanted to see was a glimpse of his best friends. Though his father had been transferred to Mumbai, it was the sum total of all those lovely experiences & friends that seemed to cast him & his cherished memories into a lullaby that his heart would meander as he waited by the signal to turn green, waiting to cross the street. Well there was one thing that united Mumbai & Kerala & that was water. For the same reason he was headed towards the Juhu Beach to re-live those memories of throwing water pebbles into the backwaters of Kerala with his group of friends.
An old man wearing a neat summer hat & an old English overcoat strutted along from the opposite end .With a royal demeanor he smoked his Bolivian cigar & dragged a few puffs into the polluted Mumbai air. There was a sense of haplessness, a feeling of missing something as his brow frowned as a car next to him honked at the other cars. He walked a heavy man, dragging his old shoulders which seemed to weigh him down.
Both the old man & this little boy walked on past the signal on to the breezy contours of Juhu and reached the famous Juhu Beach. The old man lived in a sea facing villa and dragged himself into his house and retired on a crouch, to read an old sports magazine as the evening sun was to set by the million hearts of Mumbai.
The little boy started looking for pebbles , reminiscent of a daily routine which he and his friends used to indulge in by sending sweet messages to the sea in the form of ripples, created by throwing his pebbles each one of it unique ;beating to the mystic rhythm of the sea. Alas the Juhu beach had a lot of thrown corn sticks, lots of coconut shells & more so many thrown away goods & the returns of a Mumbai man’s ablutions but no pebbles.
His endearing search landed him onto the veranda where the old man was relaxing puffing his cigar as he looked lonely. The little boy saw many pebbles on the loft encroaching the veranda. With anxious eyes his looked on at the old man, whether he could pick up those pebbles and throw them into the water.
The old man’s stern eye-brows and wrinkled brow looked looming, but for the old man there was some innocence in the boy that seemed to capture his attention. This boy reminded him of his son’s family and his beloved grandson whom he had left back in London and returned to his magical home in Mumbai, albeit alone but with satisfaction that his last would be where he hath stepped first.
There seemed to be some magic in the air, a connection as the sun gave way to the gloomy evening that the old man asked the little boy to come in. Each memory of his friends egging him on that much more to request the old man to pick up the pebbles. With a feeble voice this young boy asked the old man for water and as the old man went in to fetch a pale of water, this little boy mustered a lot of courage and picked up a few pebbles and put it into his pocket. He dint have the courage to ask the old man for pebbles and was scared by the thought of angering the old man . The weight of the pebbles had almost pulled the shorts of the little boy half down and he was finding it tough to hold onto his stock.
Out came the old man with a huge bucket & a glass of water. The litle boy’s shorts were almost on his knees. His cheeks turned red and he was scared of being caught.As he was about to run away ,the old man asked him to hold on .He requested the boy if he could do him a favour ,he asked him to fill in all the pebbles on to the bucket .The boy who was scared to death by now was left gasping for breath. He was wondering what the heck was happening.
The little boy veered to the old man and said sorry as he emptied the pebbles into bucket from his pocket. The old man said nothing & the little boy was almost shivering.He helped the old man to fill in all the pebbles into the bucket. The sun had fully set and with heartfelt memories he was to go back home ,when the old man asked him to help him on to the sea shore.
The little boy almost as if punished trotted and trudged as they reached the sea shore. The old man asked the little boy to pick the pebbles one by one and throw it into the ocean. On listening to this the little boy did a somersault in joy and jumped to no glory.
To this the old man exclaimed “ Son you remind me of my grandson, and every evening he and me used to throw a bunch of pebbles into the river thames in downtown London.”
Happy Friendship Day !!!! :)